I’m new to homebrew and have been using partial grain recipes. I recently read that adding half or so of your extract at the beginning of the boil and saving the remainder for about the last 30 minutes to 15 minutes will result in better hop utilization and more fermentables in your fermenter. Is this true? I’m planning to brew again soon and was thinking of trying this technique.
s
Absolutely. You need some extract (hence the half at the beginning) but putting off the other half (by the way, 15 minutes is plenty) helps with hop utilization. You’ll get the same amount of fermentables either way. In addition, the “extract late” technique gets you less darkening of your wort and helps reduce what’s known as “extract twang”.
Depending on how much gravity you’re getting from the mash, you might be able to add all the extract late.
Thanks for the info. My OG hasn’t been the greatest, but it is getting better. I’ll see how my next batch comes out.